Reporting #2

Unclaimed safe deposit boxes yield sentimental treasure

DAVENPORT - It wasn’t $1 million like a Sioux City resident received in 2004, but Iowa Treasurer of State Michael Fitzgerald did present a check for $7,284.74 to Davenport resident Delton Gehring on Wednesday.

Fitzgerald said the state still has more than $9 million of unclaimed money to return to Scott County residents alone. During a news conference promoting The Great Iowa Treasure Hunt at the downtown Davenport Public Library, Fitzgerald said the state holds more than $240 million in cash from unclaimed accounts.

Fitzgerald opened what appeared to be a gold watch as he spoke.

“Pocket watches, we get tons of these,” he said. “Grandpa’s watch, they hand these down. We want to help keep handing them down to the rightful owners.”

He stood behind a table full of items from unclaimed safe deposit boxes turned over by banks in Scott County, a small portion of the property collected from across the state.

The treasurer’s office holds a sale about every five years when its vault gets full, he said. If the item is sold, the proceeds are placed in an account and records are kept as to whom the money belongs and the person who purchased the item in case an owner comes forward.

“If the owner comes forward or their legal heir, they get the money,” he said. “We will also tell them who bought it. Sometimes these are sentimental items and we want them to have the chance of getting it back.”

For more information, go to greatiowatreasurehunt.com. Questions can be emailed to foundit@iowa.gov.

Railroad fans roll into, out of Q-C

A middle-age man hurries along the railroad tracks through downtown Davenport. “6988 has her warrant,” he announces to the dozen or so people scattered along the tracks near 3rd and Iowa streets. “6988 has her warrant.”

A sudden blast of a steam whistle confirms his words as Iowa Interstate Railroad Steam Engine 6988 begins to traverse the Mississippi River on the Government Bridge.

Hours earlier, crews with the railroad were near the Modern Woodmen of America home office in Rock Island, preparing the engine for its trip Tuesday to Cedar Rapids. The trip is in conjunction with the 2012 National Railway Historical Society convention being held there through Sunday.

Once a year, the society picks a historic location to explore American railroading and the impact of railways on the country’s development. Next year’s event will be in Alaska. The annual convention is open to the public, but society members pay reduced registration fees and have early access to event tickets.

Five different train trips are scheduled during the convention, and all of them explore what normally are freight-only tracks.

Henry Posner, chairman of the Iowa Interstate Railroad, said it took two years to get the convention to Iowa for the first time, The get-together is intended for railroad enthusiasts. The passenger train trips around the area have nothing to do with Amtrak’s proposed passenger rail link between the Quad-Cities and Chicago.

“This is about history and the role of freight railroads in Iowa,” Posner said. “Amtrak is a completely different story. It’s (Amtrak) a highly political, highly emotional subject, and this doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

After crossing the river, passengers disembarked for a few hours at Lafayette Park in downtown Davenport to stretch their legs and eat lunch.

Russell Lassuy of Arizona, whose father worked the Rock Island Railroad Illinois division, said the trip had been enjoyable so far.

“It’s a typical rail fans trip — you know, hurry up and wait,” he laughed.

“My dad worked for the Rock Island 40 years,” he said. “This used to be the Rock Island Line. It’s now a shortline railroad, and they didn’t forget where they came from.

“The paint scheme on the engine that pulled us into town was done up in the old Rock Island-style of red, white and black. That was everybody’s favorite. And the steam engine, who doesn’t like the steam?”

After a photo opportunity for all the riders, the train whistled its way out of town toward Walcott and back to Cedar Rapids.

A toast to home-roasting

Maquoketa man joins coffee revolution of preparing your own at home

Dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and socks, Benjamin de Waard stands on the front porch of his Maquoketa, Iowa, home, shaking a football-size wire basket filled with green coffee beans.

“I have to make sure none of the broken ones fall out during roasting,” he explains while intently eyeing the basket’s contents.

His 2-year-old daughter giggles and runs to the steps to sit down as he places the basket in a coffee bean roaster that looks more like an oversized toaster oven sitting on the ledge of the porch.

“What I love about roasting myself,” de Waard said, “is you know what the bean is supposed to be like. My goal is to roast my coffee beans for the right amount of time. I know the flavor the coffee is supposed to impart based on the region the beans come from.”

At the time, de Waard was an average coffee drinker, buying the pre-ground flavored java off the shelf.

“I was not a coffee connoisseur by any means,” he added.

Time passed and one day the co-worker returned to de Waard’s office with a cup of coffee.

“ ‘Drink this,’ ” he told me. “I was blown away. It was just incredible. It was a Natural Process coffee with a blueberry-like taste,” he said.

That sip hooked de Waard for good. And with an initial $35 investment, he was officially a Coffeehead. (A Whirley-Pop 6-quart stovetop popper cost about $25, along with a $5 thermometer and a pound of green coffee beans, which was about $5 at the time.)

Garry Burman, the owner of Burman Coffee Traders, LLC, near Madison, Wis., is one of the largest providers of green coffee beans in the country. He says that “unless you’ve got a friend or someone at work that has done it, the majority of people don’t know that home coffee-roasting exists.”

Burman’s has 800 regular customers in the Madison area and has been gaining close to 4,000 Internet customers each year.

“A local customer can walk in and choose from nearly 60 world-class coffee beans starting at $5 per pound, and we have all the roasters we carry out for them to try. You can play with one, roast a batch of beans for free, take it home and try it,” Burman said, “That’s what we do. We’ll show you how to do it, you take the coffee home and see if you like it.”

To some people, coffee is just caffeine in the morning. They don’t want to work for it.

“Most people, though, once they have tried some (home-roasted), they’re hooked,” Burman added.

Businesses such as Burman’s (burmancoffee.com) and Sweet Maria’s (sweetmarias.com), owned by Tom Owen in Oakland, Calif., sell everything needed to home-roast and provide the how-to information for everyone from beginners to the advanced home-roaster.

Since getting his start, de Waard has progressed as many do in the home-roasting life.

“I went through a few Whirley-Pops and finally broke down and purchased a more automated roaster that will do up to a pound of beans,” he said. “I have a group of regular customers that I roast for each week and a website: PerfectRoastCoffee.webs.com.”

His knowledge has increased along with his roasting skills.

“Starbucks and places like that will say, “This is a Kenyan, this is a Colombian,” and they literally will all taste the same because the beans are all roasted the same. You taste the roast, not the bean,” he said.

Picking up a coffee cup, de Waard takes a sip and says, “I like to give a cup of coffee to someone and have them say, ‘Wow, I never knew coffee could taste like that.’ ”

Second batch of Cody Road Bourbon matures in LeClaire About 900 bottles to go on limited sale beginning today

LeCLAIRE - Ryan Burchett looks over stacks of 30-gallon oak barrels filling a room at the Mississippi River Distilling Company. He touches his finger to a few beads of liquid that have formed on one of the joints of a still-swelling barrel. Licking his fingertip, he pauses and smiles. "That's wonderful," he says.

The spirit has a slight sweetness from the locally grown grains - corn, wheat and unmalted barley -- from which it was distilled, similar to other spirits produced at the distillery, especially the River Baron Vodka. "It's familiar," Burchett added. "It tastes like bourbon, but it's unique enough that you can tell it's ours."

It has been nearly a year since the second batch of Cody Road Bourbon was put up for aging. This batch is about 100 bottles fewer than the first batch, which sold out in a few days. "It's about 900 bottles," Burchett said.

The second release of Cody Road Bourbon this week came from five barrels. "That's the bad news," he admitted. "We're not talking about a lot of bourbon coming out of aging right now."

While the supply is tight now, the distillers say supplies will grow later this year. "It's so hard to tell our fans that we're out. But we're working on that," Garrett Burchett, Ryan's brother and distillery co-owner, said. "When we opened, our River Baron Vodka was selling as fast as we could make it. So we didn't have much time to make bourbon to set aside for aging."

Burchett said response to the bourbon has been positive. But unlike the other spirits that are sampled at the distillery during tours, the bourbon sold so fast that none was available for visitors to the tasting room. That lack of immediate feedback left the brothers at a loss.

"We feel a little bit blind because we haven't had that interaction with consumers like we have on our other products," Burchett said.

For the future, production has significantly increased. "We have gotten a lot more adept in the past year," Ryan Burchett said. "What used to take us a month to produce, we can now do in a week.

"In the last 10 days we have produced the equivalent of 13 barrels of bourbon," he added. "The total of our first two batches was 11 barrels. So we are putting a lot more bourbon away and you'll start seeing it in October and November of this year."

Instead of having 800 to 1,000 bottles every three months, the distillery expects to release 3,000 to 5,000 bottles every month.

"It's going to be a much easier bottle to find by the end of the year," Burchett said.

With the increased production, fans of the product can now "adopt" a barrel of Cody Road Bourbon. For $400, bourbon connoisseurs can pick out a barrel, put their name on it or decorate it as they wish. After a year of aging, the purchaser is invited back to assist in bottling the bourbon, including their barrel. The purchaser receives six bottles of finished Cody Road Bourbon and keeps the empty barrel. Burchett said 100 barrels are available for adoption.

Adaptive RAGBRAI

“You mite be sitting for the rest of your life but you don’t have to sit still.”

Advice from a paralyzed Veteran.

“Those hills in Iowa City killed me.” Bob Juarez laughs.

“Oh, I was hurting too; I gave it everything I had to make it in.” Sean Mizlo replies.

The pair work their way along the bike path in Moline, talking about cycling and life.

On Friday July 29, Juarez and Mizlo (and possibly a third) will travel to Coralville, Iowa, and join 15 members of the Adaptive Sports Iowa RAGBRAI Team and their support group, then ride the final 60 mile route to Davenport on Saturday.

Mike Boone, the Director of Adaptive Sports Iowa said. “Until this team was formed, many members never viewed RAGBRAI as an event they could achieve. It has been a very rewarding process, putting it together and getting ready to go.”

Like many cyclist making the ride across Iowa, the adaptive participants are not looking at the fitness aspect.

“In the adaptive basketball program I run in Des Moines, I’ve observed that they are not looking for an opportunity to participate in the sport. They are looking for an opportunity to participate in a sport with their peers.” Boone said.

“There is just as much of a social aspect to it as there is an athletic or health and wellness aspect.”

Mizlo, of Orion, Ill., said involvement for him is different: “For me, it’s always something new, another challenge, something else to get out and do.” His enthusiasm spreads across his face in a smile, “I hope to get more people in the Quad-Cities with different disabilities to be active again.”

While riding his motorcycle in 2005 Mizlo was struck by a drunk driver and lost his leg just above the knee. “My accident is coming up on six years, and I don’t think I have stopped yet. I looked at it as more of being blessed that I’m still alive. I try to take advantage of being here everyday.” He said.

Juarez an 18-year veteran of the Davenport Fire Department suffered a spinal cord injury after a fall from a ladder while fighting a fire in downtown Davenport on June 12, 2008.

Both men also play Adaptive softball and basketball teams in the Quad-Cities.

When asked how much training they have done, Mizlo responded quickly, “Not enough!”

Training as a group was the initial plan, but Juarez said plans changed. “We wanted to do training together but with all the work and family schedules, we ended up on our own,” he said.

“If we can even get just one more person to come out and participate, just to see if they like it -- that would be neat,” he added.

Mizlo and Juarez admitted that the combination of the BIX7 and RAGBRAI on the same day, creating one of the biggest events in Iowa sports-participation history, had some influence on their decision to take part.

If you would like more information about adaptive sports in Iowa contact Mike Boone, the Director of Adaptive Sports Iowa at (888) 777-8881 Ext: 115 or by email at mike@iowasportsfoundation.org

EDITORIAL - THE SANITATION OF WAR

Should the American people see the images of Osama Bin Laden?

Do you remember seeing the planes crashing on that beautiful morning in 2001?

Did you see the dozens who died jumping from Tower 1 and 2 to avoid burning to death?

Do you remember the thousands who died when the towers collapsed, some never to be found or identified?

We collectively wanted him dead, our leaders swore to bring his head back on a stake, but, were we, are we, willing to look at the human cost of war?

Regardless of what the president thinks, I believe Americans need to see those photos.

Thousands of the finest Americans left their homes, families and friends in respond to the call from their own hearts, and our government, to find the individual responsible, some to return without fanfare, in the dark of night in a flag draped coffin, as if in shame.

In the end, one soldier looked into the eyes of Osama Bin Laden and shot him, not once, but twice, just as he was trained to do. Just as we wanted him to.

Some say, a few words will suffice in telling the nightmares of our soldiers, I don’t think so.

We have insulated ourselves for to long from the burdens of war that we ask others to carry.

Print the images of Bin Laden disfigured, bloody face and the next time you greet a member of the United States Armed services it will be a relief to stretch out your hand and say, “thank you.”

Kevin E. Schmidt, Photo Editor

Distillery's new product has a smooth side

Developing the legendary Wild West character and flavor of its namesake could take 10 months of sitting quietly in 30-gallon oak barrels at the Mississippi River Distillery in LeClaire, Iowa.Buffalo Bill bourbon is the latest product to flow from the still, with preparation that began Saturday at the distillery.

“Buffalo Bill was the ultimate cowboy persona who loved whiskey, there was no secret about that,” Ryan Burchett said. “It’s another thing we can tell people about the history of LeClaire when they come in for a tour.” Traditionally, bourbon contains a percentage of rye grain, which gives the product a harder, spicy edge. “Our bourbon is a wheat and barley mix,” Garrett Burchett said. “It will be a sweeter, smoother product, having a nutmeg, butterscotch side to it because of the grain mixture we use.”

Ryan and Garrett Burchett are brothers and the owners of the distillery. What makes the Mississippi River Distillery different is the local grain in their product, and that’s what they want to come through, the sweetness of the grain, Ryan Burchett said.

“We want it to taste more like the grain than the barrel,” he said. “We need the barrel for the color and to pull some of that vanilla and caramel flavor from the charred wood.” When finished, they will have 22 to 25 30-gallon barrels of bourbon. It could be available for sale before the end of the year.

The 30-gallon barrels will produce the same results in a shorter time than normal when producing bourbon, according to Richard Hobbs of The Barrel Mill in Avon, Minn., which provides the barrels to the distillery. By law, bourbon has to be put in a new charred cask. The interior is exposed to extreme heat to light it on fire. It produces something similar to a charcoal filter as well as giving the spirits color and caramel and vanilla flavors and aromas. Lumber for the barrels is from what he called the Northern White Oak Forest, which is the southern Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois area. “The reason is the harsh climate,” Hobbs said. “The growing season is a lot shorter, creating a slow-growth, tight-grain wood. We are on the same parallel as France, and French oak is considered to be the best, and this area is considered to be the best of what North America has to offer.”

Paul Krutzfeldt, brewer and part owner of Great River Brewery in Davenport, talked about the possibilities for his company after the bourbon comes out of the barrels. “When these guys were talking about making bourbon, the greatest local thing we could do is use their barrels,” he said. “Right now, I use barrels from Kentucky and Templeton Rye to make barrel-aged beers. You can pull off some interesting flavors doing it that way.”

Krutzfeldt pointed to the potential for the two companies pairing up to distill beer into a whiskey. That timeline would take a year or more. Krutzfeldt said Mississippi River Distillery would need 10 months to barrel-age the light bourbon, and the beer would need to barrel-age three to six months before being distilled into whiskey.

Once the Burchett brothers get the three main brands going — vodka, gin and bourbon — they are planning to start having fun identifying other local businesses they can piggyback with and do limited seasonal runs of 500 to 1,000 bottles.

“We want to do things like taking local raspberries and doing a raspberry vodka or make a coffee liqueur with a local coffee house,” Ryan Burchett said. “We will take our theory of ultra-local to a whole new level.”

Iowa brothers start microdistillery, join trend

Two brothers and a custom-built German still are behind Iowa's newest microdistillery, opening recently in LeClaire and a symbol of what many think could be a solid growth industry for the state."We kept waiting for someone to tell us 'You're crazy,' especially the banks," Ryan Burchett said.

He and his brother, Garrett, natives of Harlan, Iowa, have opened the doors of the Mississippi River Distilling Co.

Mississippi River Distilling is the third microdistillery in Iowa. The others are Cedar Ridge Vineyards, Winery & Distillery in Swisher and Templeton Rye Spirits in Templeton.

According to Tonya Dusold with the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, there are 10 serious inquiries in Iowa about starting distilleries.

"Considering it was zero a few years ago, that's pretty impressive," she said.

The Burchetts said location was a big factor in opening a microdistillery in LeClaire.

"For us, it was the proximity to the interstate," said Garrett Burchett, a transportation planner for Richardson, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. "People are going to come and see the river, and LeClaire just fit what we were doing from the start. Our niche is all about local.

"Everything we do is tied into the local economy — local ingredients, all of our grain, everything we make will be made from corn, wheat and barley sourced within 25 miles of this building."

Local chamber and tourism officials are enthusiastic about the new business.

"It is really exciting because it is something different and it brings another layer of tourism to LeClaire," said Debbie Mulvania, president of the LeClaire Chamber of Commerce. "It meshes well with the shopping and the restaurants and everything else we have going. It's something unique."

Tours of the facility will end in the tasting room, where visitors will look across an old-fashioned bar through a large window to the focal point of the business, the custom-built German still. Patrons will be able to sample the spirits, 2 ounces per person per day, and ask questions.

Another room located at the front of the building will contain a retail shop with everything from T-shirts to drink shakers and products. Iowa law allows patrons to purchase two bottles per person per day.

Initially, the Burchetts plan on producing vodka (River Baron Vodka) and gin (River Rose Gin), both from a fermented mixture of corn and wheat. The gin contains Iowa rose petals and locally grown cucumbers in the botanical mixture. The bourbon will be distilled sometime in January from a triad of locally grown wheat, barley and corn then aged in 30-gallon charred oak barrels. It could be ready in the fall of 2011, depending on a variety of factors.

Current excitement over the opening seems to have created just the right mixture from the slightly sour past year in LeClaire.

"The last year has been really tough on LeClaire with the bridge out and the economy so bad, and all of a sudden we have some good news come to us," said Donna Walley, LeClaire tourism manager. "All of downtown LeCaire is really cute and charming, but this is one of those things that makes more people want to come to LeClaire."

Spirits are going through a renaissance that has already transformed the bread, wine, beer and cheese industries.

On the heels of the microbrewing boom, new microdistilleries or "craft distilleries" are thriving from coast to coast, according to Bill Owens, president of the American Distilling Institute in Hayward, Calif.

"We had a 20 percent growth in the industry nationally last year — 226 distilleries in 2010, up from 202 in 2009," Owens said. Some of the recent entrants are in Indiana, Kansas and the latest in LeClaire.

Owens said the renaissance in the industry is distinctly local.

Ryan Burchett, a meteorologist with KWQC-TV6 in Davenport, agrees.

"Prohibition killed small distilling in America, and it's just now coming back, whereas in Germany, for hundreds of years, if you were a farmer and you had grain left over at the end of the year that you didn't want to spoil, you could get a permit from the government and you could have a small still of 150 liters or less," he said.

"Small stills are everywhere across Germany and Austria," he said. "These guys have been making smaller stills for years and years and years, so while there are American companies starting to get into making them, the Germans are so far ahead of the game on that scale that's where everyone is going to purchase most of the new stills in America."

Small distilleries no longer need to think in terms of national distribution. The focus is on taking care of the local marketplace, making sure products are distributed in their region and letting people know who they are.

"When they come out to the distillery, they want to meet the person who made what they are tasting," Owens said.

On July 1, Iowa law changed, allowing distilleries to offer samples and sell for off-premises consumption.

"The idea of the change was specifically to allow the distilleries to be more of a tourist destination like the wineries and breweries," said Dusold, of the state alcohol division.

The small distillery is becoming part of tourism, Owens said.

"People will say, 'Hey, there's a moonshine still 200 miles away', and they are going to go drive and look at it, buy a T-shirt, hat, a bottle of vodka and take it home.

"It's just got that kind of romance, tradition and history, and that's what people are interested in."

Scott Bush, president of Templeton Rye Distilleries, and Jeff Quint, owner of Cedar Ridge Vineyards, were the driving forces behind the change.

Bush's company, which started in 2001, produces one product, Templeton Rye Whiskey.

"The ability to sell product at the distillery is nice for us, but it's not that big of a deal for Templeton Rye because we are never going to sell more than a percent or two at the distillery," Bush said.

"What it did was open the door for additional distilleries in the state," Ryan Burchett said. "There will absolutely be more than there are now. I think there will be a dozen to 20 distilleries in Iowa in the next 10 years.

"The law change was our go moment, going forward on buying the land, building the building and doing everything we needed to do."

Jamie Siefken, general manager at Cedar Ridge Vineyards, said, "It was a huge, huge, huge victory, on July 1, 2010, being able to sell our products here. We released Iowa's first bourbon since Prohibition in 1920 on that day.

"We had a huge party that weekend; hundreds and hundreds of people came out. It brought people out that never even knew we were out here."

Cedar Ridge distillery prepared from the beginning to woo tourists

In real estate, the catch phrase is “location, location, location.” For Jeff and Laurie Quint, owners of Cedar Ridge Vineyards, Winery & Distillery, the saying could be “location, location, destination.”

Wrapped by 10 acres of rolling vineyard, this agricultural specialty business sits in the heart of more than 250,000 potential customers, all within a 20-minute drive.

“The single biggest mistake a lot of wineries have made is they start out on some gravel road in the middle of nowhere, so we paid a premium for the land right on the highway, halfway between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City,” Jeff Quint said. “We definitely planned from the beginning to be a destination.”

Cedar Ridge has become a sought-after location for events, with weddings booked every weekend in 2011 from April through October.

“It’s truly a destination,” Jeff Quint said. “We spent most of 2010 promoting Cedar Ridge as a destination, as a place to come and visit, not as a product. In 2011 we are going to continue to emphasize that Cedar Ridge is a place to visit. We lead with that concept and I think product sales will fall in place as a result.”

When asked about the other two distilleries in the state, in Templeton and LeClaire, Quint responded, “The first thing that comes to my mind is what a wonderful tour. To have the three of us on one tour now, you’re not going to see the same thing three times.

The company’s 7,200-square-foot production, event and tasting facility, which opened in November 2009, allowed the manufacture of distilled spirits to quadruple and increase distribution into states such as Illinois, Missouri and New York.

Cedar Ridge lists 25 products made at the facility in Swisher — 15 wines and 10 distilled spirits. “I think our most popular product right now is our Iowa bourbon whiskey,” said production manager Kolin Brighton. “It’s made from 75 percent corn and then barley and rye making up the rest of the grain bill on that. It’s mashed here, double distilled, up to 160 proof, which is the legal limit for bourbon.”

On July 1, the distillery released Iowa’s first bourbon since Prohibition in 1920.

“We had a huge party that weekend,” said Cedar Ridge general manager Jamie Siefken. “Hundreds and hundreds of people came out, and considering the competition from all the other Fourth of July weekend events, it was crazy.”

Brighton said another popular product produced at Cedar Ridge is vodka, which recently won two gold medals in the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition.

“The vodka starts with a base of 90 percent corn distillates and 10 percent apple distillate,” he said. “We get the apples from a local orchard. The mixture is triple distilled, carbon filtered and bottled as our Clearheart Vodka.”

Quint said he believes there could be six to eight big distilleries in Iowa in the next 10 to 20 years.

“If you look at Iowa, we consider ourselves the corn capital of the country,” he said. “Most distilled spirits are made from corn, yet we import $300 million a year worth of spirits into the state. We should be a $300 million-a-year exporter.”

For Templeton, it’s always been patients and timing

In the 1920s, a rye whiskey from Templeton, Iowa, became Al Capone’s drink of choice, quickly finding its way to the center of his bootlegging empire. Hundreds of kegs per month made their way from Iowa to Chicago.

In 2001, with a nearly century–old recipe handwritten on a small scrap of paper in hand, Scott Bush and Keith Kerkhoff, two small–town Iowa guys with a shared family bootlegging history, set out on a mission to find a production partner who could help them make a product true to the independent spirit of the original Templeton Rye.

Just last month, Templeton Rye Distillery manager Kevin Boersma was telling callers it would be easier to win the lottery than find a bottle of Templeton Rye Batch No. 3. Looking at 200, 53-gallon barrels of Batch No. 4 in the Templeton warehouse, Boersma said, “This will help, but it’s still going to be hard to find. The demand is huge right now, and it’s still growing.”

“A lot of people don’t understand we have been at this for almost 10 years now,” said Bush, Templeton Rye Distillery president. “We were one of the very first microdistilleries in the country, but our product has to age. It’s a very patient game in that regard.

“We have been positioning ourselves for several years now to finally have enough product to really make a splash,” he said. “We kind of want to be the Sam Adams of this craft in the spirits world, and I think we are fairly well-positioned to do that over the next three to four years.”

Although Bush never intended the distillery in Templeton to become a tourist destination, he admits to being amazed by the number of visitors who have found their way to Templeton.

“I would say we’ve had close to 20,000 people since we opened the doors in 2005,” he said.

The sample bar and room was added in May 2008.

“We try to do guided tours twice a month,” Boersma said. “When I post tour dates, a week later they’re full. We take two groups of 50 in each tour. We have guys driving from Minneapolis, Minn., Lincoln, Neb., Kansas City, Mo. They know the Templeton Rye story. They just want to see it.”

A mention in a recent company newsletter on whether anyone wanted to come help bottle Batch No. 4 drew 150 people from California, Florida, Texas and Colorado on different dates in November and December.

The distillery employs about 15 part-time and five full-time staff. Templeton is a town of 350 people, and for Bush and his partner it was a tough decision not to build the business in Des Moines.

“We’ve partnered with the Templeton Community Betterment Association to put on a local summer music festival called Rock & Rye,” Bush said. “We guarantee the bands and the town get all the concessions at the event. It makes Templeton the place to be in western Iowa for one night in the summer.” A distillery in Lawrenceburg, Ind., is the distillation partner for the companies’ product, nicknamed “The Good Stuff.”

“Eventually we would love to grow all of our ingredients near Templeton and distill all of our product here, and we are working hard on that,” Bush said. “People sometimes don’t appreciate how difficult it is and how much time something like that takes. When you’re doing a specialized crop and spirits like that, you can’t just flip a switch and change it.

“I always say good spirits are made from two things, good grain and good water, and there is no reason that Iowa is not the leading craft distilling state,” he said.

Templeton Cafe

Laughter and small talk fill the small cafe just off Highway 141 one mile south of Templeton, as 17 local residents gather for an afternoon coffee break. It grows quiet as heads turn, necks strain and all eyes watch a stranger walk past the front window of the local hub of activity.

“I guess I’m the odd person out?” I say to the group as they all stare. There is no response as glances dart around each table. There are a few whispers.

“What can I help you with?” owner Joe Kemper grins as he appears from around a corner of the room with a pot of refills in his right hand.

“I’m from a newspaper in Davenport, Iowa; can I ask a few questions about Templeton Rye?”

Joe’s right eye closes slightly as he looks me over from head to toe; he turns and throws an inquisitive look towards several individuals at each table. Heads drop, avoiding contact.

“You better come back here, I don’t think anyone is going to talk to you.”

He motions to a counter in the back of the room where his wife Donna Kemper is rolling silverware in white napkins. Conversations begin to pick up.

“Templeton Rye has been great for us,” Donna says with a smile. “We get tour buses that come through when they’re bottling, and people are stopping in all the time asking for directions to the distillery. They come back for a bite to eat when they find out it’s not open.”

A voice can be heard from a table close behind. “He’s asking about Templeton.”

She gestures to the tables, Donna says, “Most of these people grew up here, live here, started businesses here. Templeton Rye is part of their history. Many of their families and relatives were involved in bootlegging during Prohibition and they just don’t want to talk about it.

“This is a very clean, very proud community.”

Geocaching, a high-tech treasure hunt, connects people to nature

Standing on a paved road near the Ingersoll Wetlands Learning Center North of Thomson, Ill., veteran geocacher Bob Bergman of Clinton, Iowa, stops to listen.

Three young voices can be heard among the sounds of cracking twigs and branches slapping against heavy jackets in the brush and trees below.

“We are supposed to be on a path of some kind,” one voice yells. “I found an animal trail; maybe this is it,” calls another.

“I guess we are going bushwhacking,” Bergman remarks to the three adults following near him as he walks down the embankment after the now-disappearing voices along the Mississippi River.

The group was one of several participating in the Curing Cabin Fever geocaching event at the end of March.

“We have close to 60 people that have signed up throughout the day,” Pam Steinhaus of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. “The majority of the people are new, with nine veterans that are going to be helping the first-timers learn how to geocache. They get excited for their sport.”

Steinhaus explains that geocaching originally was a high-tech treasure-hunting game played throughout the world by adventure-seekers equipped with GPS devices. One of the center’s goals is to connect people back to nature, and one way is through technology.

“Many kids today spend a lot of time in front of a televisions or computers playing video games and things, so we use that technology to find treasures.” Steinhaus said. “Caches could be everything from pen-cap-sized containers to an Earth cache, which is simply finding a specific location.”

“Jackson County had one that took us to several different scenic locations around the county,” Bergman said, holding a barbed wire fence apart for the group to pass through. “After finding each location, you were supposed to take a photo and e-mail it in, showing you found the exact location shown on their Web site.”

On one, the final cache was a big Tupperware container about 2 feet square, with a fake rock over the top of it. “And it was in the middle of someone’s backyard. It was full of all kinds of stuff, Lego blocks, small stuffed animals … you would not believe what was in it,” Bergman’s wife, Sue, laughed.

Among the geocachers were Boy Scouts Carson Hibbard, Drake Dublo and Chase Hutchison from Troop 55 from Chadwick and Milledgeville, Ill.

“Would you rather do this or be at home playing video games?” they are asked.

“Doing this!”

The three Scouts finish signing their name to a small piece of paper found in the cache and return it to a small container and attach it to a post.

Sue Bergman finds the clue for the next cache as the Scouts check their GPS units for the direction of the coordinates.

“I can’t see the light of day” she reads.

“Maybe it’s in the shade,” one says. “Or behind a tree,” shouts another, as they run through the tall grass toward a stand of trees 100 yards away.

Lewiston F2 - 1999

It’s not often that you find yourself at an intersection in life and even though you made the right choice … it leaves you shaking.

It was about 6:45 p.m. on July 8, 1999, when I decided to turn west on Minnesota Highway 14. I had just dropped my daughter and her friend at home after receiving a call about storm cell sightings north and west of Winona, Minn.

Coming out of the valley, I watched as the sky dropped down like a pencil from heaven scribbling a line southeast across the countryside.

Before I could pull over, the intensity cut a path through the community of Lewiston, leaving two injured, damaging 26 homes, and destroying four. The tornado was.

100-yards wide and traveled 3 1/2 miles.

I stood on the roadway, one camera pressed to my face, the other slung over my shoulder.

I watched between frames as the base of the funnel dropped below a rise in the horizon, and then an explosion of debris. A barn and several outbuildings disappeared.

Switching cameras, I focused on the swirling skirt at the storm’s base as it moved to my left. That’s when I began to hear the roar … a dark wall … running across the cornfields to my right … hail.

Dime-size hail hurts, and leaves a good welt on the skin.

Back in the newsroom at the Winona Daily News, I was saving the second image file as my boss wandered across the empty newsroom. “Get anything?” he asked.

Turning the computer monitor and smiling, I looked up, “I think so.”

An expletive escaped his lips as he glimpsed the image on the screen and turned running back to his office. “Tear up page one,” I remember him saying to someone on the phone, “We have something better.”

I was getting ready to go home for the night after sending two images to The Associated Press when my desk phone rang. It was a staff photographer from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I’ve been chasing storms for thirty years hoping to get a picture like that,” he said. “What was it like?”

“It was unbelievable,” I said, recounting the details of the evening.

It was then I realized my problem. “Were you scared?” he asked. I stared at my right hand, which was trembling uncontrollably.

“Scared? No, surprisingly, not at all.”

Midwest hospitality

It was late.

WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling meanders down the main street in Winfield, Kan.; it’s near 10 p.m. The lights are still on at Captain Tony’s Pizza & Pasta Emporium. “Say, would you mind staying open a little later?” he asks the robust owner, John Butters. “We have 10 people who have not had a good sit down meal in a long time.”

Forty-five minutes later we were sitting around a table laughing, joking and enjoying some of the best Italian food I’ve tasted in a long time. It was unanimous that the spaghetti and meatballs was second to none. Jim Reed retrieved a copy of his new book from his truck, which we all signed and left as a gift. Then with hugs and many thank yous and very full stomachs, we headed into the darkness and a 90-minute drive to Independence, Kan. Midwest hospitality, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Editorial - A driving lesson

Checking the mirrors and turning around to look for any traffic, I calmly reached over and firmly gripped the steering wheel from the passenger side. “Slow down a little … more,” I said to my 15-year-old daughter as we drove south on Tuesday towards Maquoketa on U.S. Highway 61. “I want you to feel what the car does when the wheels go from the highway to gravel.” Her eyes grew wide and I could feel her grip tighten on the wheel. She didn’t say a word.

Two days earlier, 15-year-old Sarah O'Connell was driving her family's van, filled with luggage and the joy of a family vacation to the West Coast, when it crashed on U.S. 61 north of Maquoketa, killing her father Joe and mother Anne and leaving her, a 13-year-old brother and a 10-year-old sister with injuries.

The passenger tires rumbled onto the gravel with the ping of rocks hitting the underside of the car growing louder, I eased the wheel to the left, bringing the car back onto the highway, then repeated the maneuver. “Turn right up there,” I finally said. She pulled the car into a gravel parking lot just off the highway eight miles north of Maquoketa.

“What are we doing?” she asked as I began to get out of the car. She gave me a louder “Dad” when she saw I was pulling an orange safety vest from the back seat.

“Come on, I want to show you something on the highway.” I said as we walked up the hill to the roadway. She grabbed on to my hand tighter than I have felt in a long time.

For a number of years while working at a newspaper in Winona, Minn., I began to ask some of the Highway Patrol, sheriff deputies and local police officers what they looked for at accident and crime scenes. Most ignored me, but a few took the time to point out the key elements that gave the most information for their investigations. With time, I learned a great deal.

My daughter and I walked along the road, semis and vehicles of all kinds leaving us in a whirl of dust, I stopped and pointed to a tire mark on the edge of the road, “That is where the accident started,” I said. “Now turn around and look at what happened.” With a long break in the traffic we walked the skid marks on the roadway into the grass; I showed her where the van started to roll and where it landed. “It only took about three seconds.” I finished. Her grip on my hand had gotten tighter.

“Do you see where we drove on the gravel?” I asked. “The same area,” she responded.

She looked surprised.

We returned to our car and I gave back the keys to Tori, saying, “You have to drive with confidence, not arrogance, and always pay attention.”

“This was an accident of inexperience,” I continued as she drove towards home “No one really to blame; things like that just happen. The sad part is that the deaths may have been avoided by someone making the choice to wear seat belts.”

Tori’s driving on the way home was better than it had been. It seemed like something was different.

“Maybe, just maybe,” I thought.

Pilot aims to inspire awe

Smoke begins to trail from the plane.

“OK, Kevin, here comes that little sideslip I was talking about,” stunt pilot Greg Poe’s voice crackles through the headset Thursday as the ethanol-powered Fagen MX2 slides into place low and behind the A36 Bonanza at about a thousand feet for our late afternoon flight over the Quad-Cities.

“A beautiful view, isn’t it?” he continues.

“Oh, yes,” I respond. “I never get tired of views like this.”

With a pause and a sense of emotion, Poe responds, “Yeah … no kidding.”

Poe is one of the featured performers in this weekend Quad-City Air Show at the Davenport Municipal Airport. The 24th annual Air Show will include the United States Navy Leap Frogs parachute team and aircraft including F/A-18, F/A-18 E, the Air Force F-15 Strike Eagle and A-10 Thunderbolts.

“What do you hope the audience gets from the air show?” I ask Poe.

“My hope is that the audience comes away thinking ‘I didn’t know what these new high-tech airplanes could do.’ That they are a little bit awed. Hopefully, inspired.”

After two passes over the Mississippi River and two knife edge maneuvers, we fly west where the real flying awaits.

“Honestly, this is a culmination of a dream come true,” Poe responds when asked what he gets from doing air shows. “When I was a youngster in school, I dreamed of flying.”

He smiles and looks out at the cotton-white clouds passing by. “I pursued it very passionately, and now this is what I get to do,” he says.

“Some people go into the office; some pound nails or drive a dump truck …” he smiles again. “I fly airplanes, and I’m a very fortunate guy.”

After we do a loop that put 4 Gs of pressure on us, I begin thinking this flight is not bad — if I could keep up and down straight.

“How you doing?” Poe asks after each stunt. I think he is expecting me to scream “Uncle,” but I am enjoying myself too much.

Into an aileron roll we go, then straight up, performing a hammerhead stall. Incredible, simply incredible.

“What’s the most memorable?” I ask.

“A lot of it is the sights,” Poe answers. “Breaking through a layer of clouds and a ray of light is coming through that illuminates the side of a cliff or a mountain.”

The excitement in his voice grows.

“The bright reds, yellows and gold colors, things you would not see if you had not been there at exactly that moment.”

Poe goes on to explain that what flying does best for him is provide a “magic carpet.”

“It has taken me all over the world, and I have had an opportunity to meet and spend time with people from all walks of life. That’s the best experiences I’ve had.”

We touch down and roll toward the hangar.

A magic carpet ride, I think. One fantastic carpet ride.

Here on the range

“Heyyy ya! Hup, hup, hup,” a woman’s voice echoes down a heavily wooded ravine. Bellowing cattle crash through thick brush in response, only to be turned in another direction by the fervent whistles and “whoops” of several horse-mounted cowboys waiting at the bottom of the draw.

This is not in Texas or an old Western movie. It’s the yearly Ewoldt cattle roundup and branding a few miles west of Davenport.

Donning a well-worn pair of leather chaps, Jennifer Ewoldt leans forward on her horse, peering up the hill into the trees.

“Today we are rounding up and branding our calves,” she says. Then she stops, grins, looks up, “which means we get to have fun with all of our friends … and have a good day … and get muddy and dirty and injured, probably … who knows.”

Sitting high in the saddle, Chris Hausch counts cattle moving up the hillside as Jessica Riley slides off her horse to pull barbed wire from an old fenceline into a pile. Fellow riders and horses pass by. The nine cowhands continue moving the small herd of animals out of the woods into a rolling grass section of land toward the open gates of the corral.

Branding, Ewoldt says, is for when the calves are sold in the fall to a feedlot. The Rafter E brand on the animals’ hips tells everyone where they came from. If a buyer thinks the cattle look good, they know where to go to get more.

“I only know of one other person around here who brands their cattle like we do, but that’s not to say that there aren’t more out there,” says Ewoldt, who writes a farm column published every other Monday in the Quad-City Times.

“We are a very small minority who use horses to work our cattle and brand and rope calves. Working from horseback as opposed to using four-wheeler is low-stress for the cattle.”

The cattle are herded through a feedlot into a corner pen where several cowboys wait.

“Let’s get them against the back fence, don’t ya think, Jim?” Robb Ewoldt, Jennifer’s husband, yells at Jim Seifert of Donahue, Iowa. Then with a horizon-wide grin he adds, “Work smarter not harder has always been my theory.”

Then, one by one the cattle are separated, leaving only calves in the pen.

Monte Alkire of Cazenovia, Ill., tosses his lariat, snaring the back legs of a calf.

“No matter how many times I make a good throw, there’s nothing like it,” he says. “It doesn’t get any better than this for a cowboy. This is like the Super Bowl for us, and it’s a great chance to help Robb and work my horse.”

Under a nearby awning, family friends watch the action.

Helpers pull a calf a few yards outside the pen, where five individuals pounce, each with a specific purpose. One holds the head and a front leg, one controls the back legs, another gives an injection just under the front leg; a second is administered if it’s a male. The ear is tagged, males are castrated and each animal is branded.

“We use freeze branding on 95 percent of our cattle,” Robb Ewoldt says. The iron brand is placed in liquid nitrogen. “It’s different from a hot brand because we are not going into the skin, the cold changes the color pigment of the hair from black to white. The cold brand pops out more so than a hot brand would.”

Branding in general is less common now as most ranchers and farmers use ear tags of some sort, electronic or otherwise, Robb Ewoldt says. “It is still quite common in the western states, which follow long-standing branding laws.”

The last calf bellows as it’s released, and a young boy chases it across the pen.

“Ya, ya, ya,” he bellows back.

“Who’s drivin’, who’s ridin’?” Robb Ewoldt looks around as several hands indicate who would be riding horses back to the house where the day began.

The six amble their way across the grassy hillside and disappear into the tree line.

Standing tall

By no means is my son perfect but, from time to time, he has stood taller than many I look up to.

It had become clear that our nearly 16-year-old sheltie, Ted, was having more and more difficulty than he or we could deal with. So on a Friday afternoon Nick, his mother and older sister made the sad trip to the local veterinarian. My wife (Carole) recounted that she and Katie broke down into tears as soon as they touched the door to the office but Nick seemed to stand a little taller, and for better words, he became, “the man of the family,” she said. A lady just leaving with her pet stopped and said, “What a beautiful dog.” This caused Carole and Katie to sob even more. Nick stood quietly next to his mother.

They were escorted into an exam room and sat Ted onto the table, laying him on his side. Nick later told me, “He kept trying to get up,” He said, “I put my hand on his chest to try and calm him; his heart was beating so fast.” Nick stood there with his hand on Ted’s chest through the end. Next to his tearful mother and sister, he stood quietly strong.

It wasn’t until later in the darkness of the downstairs hallway did Nick break down and cry. He had called his best friend to tell of the afternoon’s event, and during the conversation he broke into tears and let his emotions gush out.

I caught up with Nick later that night at the local high school football game. He spotted me from a distance and he greeted me with a smile and a fist-to-fist hand shake. “Mom told me how you handled yourself today,” I said. “I’m very proud of you.” His head dropped a little. “It was sad, just really sad.” he replied.

Putting my arm around his shoulder, I quietly said into his ear, “I know, but you were there and stood strong when others needed you most; not many people have that kind of character.” A glance and slight smile was his response.

“Hey, where is your sweatshirt?” I asked. A bigger smile ripped across his face. “Oh um….” His eyes glanced over to a group of classmates. And there, to one side, was a young lady wearing Nick’s sweatshirt. “She said she was cold.” He shrugged.

I laughed and gave him a hug.

“Call me when the game is over. I’ll pick you up.” I said “I love you” as I walked away. “I love you too, Dad.” He responded with a smile. "It's hard to walk in a crowd with tears in your eyes."

Fathers & Sons

1947

The most memorable sports event came during the intramural basketball tournament my freshman year. Our first game was against the junior class team. They were good, but could have been much better if they could have gotten their mind off their girls. They fully expected to wipe the gym floor with the freshmen. As it turned out we won 54-35 and I scored 27 of the 54 points.

The best part was when I looked over to the bleachers and saw my dad sitting there. He was building a TB sanitorium in Ottumwa, Iowa, at the time and generally didn't get home till well after six.

To this day I don't know why he was home early. At the end of the game I walked over to where he was sitting to say hi, and being the master of superlatives that he was he responded, "Good game."

I showered and we walked home together. I have often wondered what his thoughts were as he watched me play in the building he had built in 1927.

To my knowledge it was the only time he got to see me play.

Paul J. Schmidt (Nicks’ Grandfather)

It’s amazing how a few words can clear up years of questions.

Two and a half years before, Nick played summer baseball. The last game of that season ended with his team receiving medals for their third place finish in the season tournament. It also ended with Nick having a batting average of .000 for the season. I had been at every game. We practiced each week but it didn’t matter, his shoulders slumped as he walk away from the field that day. The team had won but he felt a loser.

Now to everyone’s surprise, Nick went out for the wrestling team this fall. But a few days before his first match he made the request. “I don’t want anyone coming to my matches; I don’t want you to see me lose.”

I saw the bus pull up in front of the school, returning from the third wrestling meet of the season. As I watched the team file into the school, I recalled the sad distant sound of Nick’s voice telling of the two previous competitions. “I lost, I got pinned, I lost, I lost, I lost.” Two meets, five opponents, five losses. He climbed into the van with an unusual look on his face.

“How’d you do?” I asked. It was dark as we pulled away but I could hear the smile on his face. “I won, I won both.” he said. “Tell me about it.” I responded.

He started: “The first was a good match, I beat him on points, then before the second match, I thought, 'OK, I proved I can do this, (win), now I’m going to prove I can contribute to the team.' I beat the second guy on points too.”

He had become what I had seen for a long time -- a winner -- and he did it alone. I was sure he couldn’t see my eyes welling up with tears as we drove home.

Growing up on politics

I was in a conversation with an Obama staffer in Des Moines, talking about what was coming next now that the Iowa Caucus was soon to be over. I mentioned that my son and I had been photographing the candidates since the March 10, 2007, Obama event in Dubuque, Iowa.

She stopped me. “I remember you,” she said. I put my hand up to show Nick's height. “You asked my son if he was my little helper,” I said. Her facial expression changed to reflect her words, “Oh, I bet that didn’t go over well,” she said. “No, that wasn’t bad,” I said, “It was when you told him he could go get some cookies downstairs that ticked him off.”

We both laughed. I went on to explain the variety of candidates we had covered since then and that Nick was 200 miles away photographing a Republican caucus on his own. Then my cell phone rang. Nick was on the line with a technical question, which we quickly solved. I looked at the Obama staffer as I asked Nick if he remembered the lady from our first outing. “Oh yes” he responded. She was already saying out loud, “I’m so sorry.” I held the phone out to her. She went on to apologize to Nick and said, “I hear you have become quite a political reporter.”

“She has no idea” I thought.

Over the past 10 months that 12-, now 13-year-old boy had given up time with his friends to suffer through long political speeches from eight different candidates. Several he endured two or three times. He pushed through sickness to show he could complete a task he promised to do. He read and discussed background information on people his classmates saw as old and completely uninteresting. Nick learned how to gain the advantage over many of the professionals he encountered at each event. And now, he was on assignment, on his own, 200 miles away. The thoughts ran through my head in a moment as I took my phone back.

“What did you think of that?” I asked him. All I could hear was his laughter. “I’ll see you when I get home. Good job, Nick.”